Jack and Dianne - Portuguese 2023

 We walked from Padron to a nice Casa in Teo.  The weather was great and the walk only 11 miles.  We walked with 6 people from Iowa who we met earlier in the walk.  We took a taxi from our previous Casa to Padron to start the walk.  We boug Santiago cake in Padron which we would eat the next day.  The walk was nice and it e great to spend time with these wonderful people as we walked the trail.   The track was very nice with a lot of dirt trail thru first and we had roads that were less traveled.  One do the walkers was struggling with knee pain and at the end she battled up hill to get to our Casa.  The Casa was a wonderful set of two stone buildings right in the trail.  We had rooster crowing and lambs baahing which was alot of fun.  The dinner was wonderful and we hand a great time talking about many topics on the walk and after our in then park behind our accommodations.  It was a wonderful day. 

We went from Pontevedra to Padron which was about 13 miles.  The weather was hot with a high of 82 and sunny.  A lot of the track was on gravel trails and the first sections had alot of shade - but for the last sections we were in full sun to finish.  We saw some horses today which was very fun and most were white.   We saw more gardens and people working in them.  Some of the gardens were already in full bloom and others were still getting planted.  We saw a husband and wife with the husband using a how to make the holes in the dirt and the wife dropping seed and filling it back in.  We didn’t get any church stamping yesterday and all of them were closed - this was pretty unusual.   We wanted to talk about our morning ritual.  We awake at 7 and get moving pretty quickly.  Dianne stretches and Jack checks the news.  Then we start going thru the steps. Sun screen followed by new skin followed by bandages then tape.  And finally ...

 We walked from Pontevedra to Caldas de Reis today and it was another hot and long day. We walked thru the main square of Pontevedra and got our first stamp at the Peregrino church in the square.  It was a beautiful church.  We headed out and bought Santiago cake at a bakery before we left the city.  We walked out of town along nice trails into the country.  A few miles out of town we stopped at the Santa Maria church and said a prayer.  Next door for the church was another building where a Monk was living.  He was giving prayer to Pilgrims.   Dianne and I got into a circle him and others and received an individual blessing from the Monk.  It was very special for both of us.   We met up with our friends from Iowa and we finished the wall with them. Heidi was having a tough day walking but in the end she finished the walk with us. We enjoyed each others company and we spent time waking about a lot of different topics.  We all had int...